


all just fade away

by highwayfawn



Category: Halt and Catch Fire
Genre: (kind of), Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fix-It, Guilt, Hospitals, M/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-08-22 03:08:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8270327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highwayfawn/pseuds/highwayfawn
Summary: It's almost funny, he thinks. Two falls. Two broken survivors.
Takes place after 3x08, told in a series of vignettes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> used to be so innocent, thought I'd never change  
> a victim of the feeling then, fighting everyday  
> nothing here is permanent; we all just fade away
> 
> writing on the wall // bob moses

They don't let him go in the ambulance.

Because they have to question him, he supposes, or maybe because they think he shouldn't see. They don't tell him much. They're quiet, talking to him like they're talking to a grieving widow, using the words "critical condition" and then looking back and forth among themselves like they're unsure if the term is too forgiving. The room seems to spin.

It's freezing in the apartment. He can't get up to shut the balcony door. An officer does it for him, looking sympathetic in a way that makes Joe want to vomit. Even after they leave, filing out of his apartment with their papers and tape recorders and quiet chatter, even after they're gone, Joe can't get up. He can't look in that direction.

 _Mr. Ray,_ they kept saying. _How well did you know Mr. Ray?_ (Past tense. Past tense.) _Why was Mr. Ray in your apartment? Were you aware Mr. Ray was wanted for questioning in relation to -_

It repeats, over and over and over again. Endless babble in his brain. A hollow loop. He can't get up. He can't look outside. He knows what he'll see down there. The ambulance is gone, the sirens faded at least an hour ago, and by now someone's probably down there cleaning up the mess. It might even be gone.

But he can't get up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway, i have way too many f*cking feelings about this show
> 
> I have no idea what floor Joe's apartment is on but I'm just gonna chill over here and pretend it was a livable fall. If anyone needs me I'll be in denial xx


	2. Chapter 2

It's nearly dark before he gets the call.

"Joe MacMillan?" the voice on the other end of the line asks, a woman, quiet and professional. Joe thinks, for a moment, that his blood has stopped moving. Or maybe it's just the chill lingering. He's so cold.

"Yes," he answers, wavering. "Yes, this is Joe MacMillan."

"You gave your telephone number to the police," the woman says, then pauses, waiting. Her voice is very gentle. Joe swallows.

"Yes," he says. "I did."

"Mr. Ray has just gotten out of surgery. He's under sedation," she tells him. "The doctors have put him in an induced coma, until it's clear how extensive his injuries are."

"They don't - he was in surgery? And they don't know?"

"It was a very bad fall, Mr. MacMillan," the woman says, far too kindly for this conversation.

Joe puts the phone back on the hook and gets his coat.


	3. Chapter 3

Ryan looks smaller in the hospital bed.

It's funny, how that works - people always look smaller, with the machines and the tubes and the white blankets, white sheets. Joe remembers Lev, bruised black and blue, little rubber tubes poking out and trailing in all directions. He'd stood on the other side of the glass for a long time then, afraid to step into that room, afraid of remembering, afraid of being that kid all over again.

He'd spent nearly two years in one of those rooms. He never wanted to step foot in one ever again.

But there's no protective glass this time. There are no guards outside the door, and the nurses let him in freely, the FBI apparently no longer interested in some kid who threw himself into a coma.

In the hospital bed, Ryan looks even smaller than Lev did, maybe because he is, maybe just because Joe's closer. It's hard for Joe to imagine himself ever looking that small, even though he still feels it most days, still expects to see that kid in the mirror with wide eyes and gauze bandages taped all over. It's hard to imagine someone else seeing him that way. The thought makes him itch.

Ryan looks - Ryan looks like a kid. Ryan looks like he's going to die. His left arm is in a cast that goes all the way up to his shoulder, half his body wrapped up in gauze. The bandages cover part of his face, wrap around the back of his head in a way Joe doesn't want to think about. The fall broke both of his legs, fractured three vertebrae; the surgeons don't know if he'll be able to walk again if he wakes up.

If.

Joe's stomach flips. He forces himself to sit, stop thinking. Reaches out, closes his hand around Ryan's. Sits and stares at the wall. Clean and deceptively calm blue paint. Hospitals have a tendency to be depressing, he thinks, with their slate and white and periwinkle like a cold, solemn day, a winter funeral. He closes his eyes and sees flickers of the ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge. He thinks of his mother. Thinks of the yard, the fence, the old pain that still crawls through his ribs when the weather gets bad.

He wonders if Ryan felt the same as he did as a kid, falling - a blink of fear; freezing air; the horrible knowing that death is waiting below on the ground, inescapable. Pain.

Darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

_Were you and Ryan ever, y'know - more than friends?_

Gordon's voice echos in his head. Stuttering, flushed; it had been fun to toy with him, watch him squirm and fall over himself in that pointedly Heterosexual But Polite way. It had been funny, then.

And Joe had said, confidently, because it was the truth: _I never had those feelings for Ryan._

Now his mind is a snake pit, a festering wound, laced with doubt. Regret. It's venomous, eats him up from the inside out. _Liar,_ his mind tells him.

It's not funny anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

Joe reads the note again and again. Sometimes he cries; sometimes not. Sometimes the words feel like poison, leave him nauseous and aching and cold. Sometimes they seem beautiul. Heartfelt and real in a way he could never achieve himself, not with all his grandiose speeches, all the well-learned spiel, the inspirational bullshit. Sometimes he envies that rawness.

Sometimes he hates himself.

The doctors tell him that Ryan is stable. Still under that heavy blanket of sedation, but stable for now, and the surgeons have fixed everything they could fix. Pieced him back together again, still broken but at least whole.

Everyone in the hospital talks to Joe warily, like they're not sure if they're supposed to. They look around as though seeking guidance, unsure of how to handle him, sympathy and judgement equally present in their eyes when they watch him pass in the hall. Joe wonders if it's the fact that Ryan's a suspect in a crime, or maybe because they can see through Joe himself. Maybe they know what he is: a snake, a liar, a thief, a near-killer. A toxin that spreads and spreads and spreads. Maybe they know he can't be trusted.

Or maybe it's something else. It's San Francisco, and it seems the city is killing itself off. The ICU is full of dying bodies, AIDS patients and their grieving lovers, grieving friends, people who are only allowed there because they kicked and shouted until the doctors had to yield. The nurses skirt around them in the hall like the air they breathe is contagious.

What ever the reason is, Joe resents them. Resents this place, this horrible suffocating wing that seems to snuff out life rather than rekindle it. He hates that Ryan is here, with the sick and dying, the ones who are already dead and just don't know it yet.

But Ryan is stable.

That's all that matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (shows up 4 months late with angst)


End file.
